How to Steal a Million

A medium-good entry in a genre I really love: the heist movie. Audrey Hepburn is the daughter of one of my favorite character actors, Hugh Griffith, who played the ribald Squire Western in Tom Jones. Papa is an art forger who has done very well for himself and Audrey, selling phony masterpieces to gullible billionaires. But hubris has caught up with him. He has ... Read more »

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

The 1960s was a transitional time for Broadway musicals. In the past was the work of Rogers and Hammerstein (Oklahoma, The Sound of Music), Lerner and Loewe (My Fair Lady, Camelot). Soon to come were musicals by Kander and Ebb (Cabaret, Read more »

How to Train Your Dragon

I expected that this would get about a 50% at Rotten Tomatoes. Half liked it and half didn’t. Imagine my surprise when I saw it had 98%. That just doesn’t make sense to me. There was very little going for this movie, it was so routine you could imagine the scene 15 minutes down the line, you could know pretty certainly which line of dialogue was about to come ... Read more »

Howard the Duck

Michael Cimino made The Deer Hunter, with most of the new generation of Holly wood stars. Awards showered down on him. Then he made Heaven’s Gate. He hasn’t been heard from since.

Steven Spielberg made Jaws, revolutionizing the action movie genre, then he made Close Encounters of ... Read more »

Howl

For the most part, the Beat Generation doesn’t interest me. I tried reading Jack Kerouac’s book and found it dull and self-indulgent. I just wasn’t interested in his adventures with Neal Cassady and others. And I freely admit that very little poetry appeals to me that was written after, say, T.S. Eliot. But Allen Ginsberg is the exception. I can’t say I knew him, but I met him, during the ... Read more »

Howl’s Moving Castle

Once more I will acknowledge that Hayao Miyazaki is an unquestioned genius, with the one of the most stunning visual imaginations I’ve ever encountered. For him, I overcome my objections to anime because he’s simply a blast to take a trip with. And again, I don’t have any problem with dubbed anime, since the lips don’t synchronize with anything, anyway. There are a lot of big western names ... Read more »

Hugo

I think what I liked the most about this one was the use of 3D. I confess I haven’t seen a lot of recent films in 3D, but the ones I have seen, in the 2D version, convince me that the 3D was just an embellishment, used mostly in action sequences: roller coaster rides, things protruding from or flying out of the screen. Ho-hum. Until now, the only film I’ve seen that I am certain would be ... Read more »

Hula Girls

Change a depressing, failing, industrial, Thatcherized city in the English midlands to a failing, depressing coal mine in a cold part of Japan. Change overalls to grass skirts. Change striptease to hula dancing. Change out-of-work factory men to out-of-work coal miner’s daughters. Finished? What you’ve done is change The Full Monty to Hula ... Read more »

The Human Face

This is a 4-part BBC mini-series hosted by John Cleese. Pardon me, it was hosted and written by Cleese. Some people at the IMDb discussion of this series were grumping that any science series these days has to be hosted by some “big name” who probably knows nothing about the subject. Aside from a great big “Who cares, ... Read more »